Changing Lanes

Photostencil screenprint, painting on canvas

Unit 4 Art Making and Exhibiting

In her artwork, Eleni Panousis combines free form acrylic painting and photographic screen-printing to portray an abstract collage of directions, or “lanes”. She develops previous experimentation with movement and the emotional significance of place, using the visual metaphor of multiple road routes to express the intense energy and trepidation of navigating life choices and entering young adulthood. The artist incorporates imagery from her home suburb, Bundoora, imbuing personal experience and memory as she reflects the question of what makes up somebody’s identity. This piece expands upon her prior use of photographic screen printing, introducing acrylic brushstrokes to create an immersive texture, enhancing the visual interconnectedness between the images. The artist aims to create a composition that is emotionally evocative for her viewer, her charged brushstrokes, looming branches and printed roads pointing toward multiple different directions and states of being. The roundabout at the centre of the piece suggests a central desire to move and shift courses in life, surrounded by the vibrant and contradicting possibilities that both excite and overwhelm. Her piece aims to capture the strange beauty of feeling directionless, with nature, written words and industrial landscape all overlapping to reflect a chaotic, cathartic sense of self.